Gabbeh - Bakhtiari Persian Carpet 7'7"x5'2"

The colours of each carpet look different depending on the side from which you look at it. You can see the carpet from different perspectives in the images below: (click on the images below for greater detail)

Gabbeh Carpets : Gabbeh in Farsi means natural, primitive. Carpets and rugs with this name are woven by the nomads Qashqai who roam about, or in villages in Southwestern Iran where they live. The yarns are processed and twisted by hand, painted with herbal colours and woven with a wool warp up to 2 cm thick. These rugs are simple, with few designs, or monochrome. The simple, linear designs with animals and human figures give them a contemporary look. Various names are given to Gabbeh rugs such asBasic, Amalehbaft, Kashkooli, Luribaft and Sumak. Gabbeh Kashkooli is a carpet with high knot density and thinner than ordinary Persian Gabbeh rugs. The Persian Gabbeh is very durable and its quality is very good.

Bakhtiari Carpets : In the mountains Zagros, west of the city of Isfahan, around the town of Shahr-e-Kurd, live the nomads Bakhtiar. Their carpets are known for the design with various repeating squares in which flowers and animals are depicted. For this reason the design is called "garden"(Khesti). Their carpets are very durable with a dense weave and very good quality Persian wool coming from sheep grazing at a high altitude. The best Bakhtiari carpets with highest knot density are often called Bibibaff.

Nomadic carpets: Carpets woven by nomads. Nomads move continuously and do not stay permanently in one geographic region. They manufacture (weave) handmade carpets on collapsible looms. Due to that fact there may be slight variations in weaving and their carpets are sometimes uneven in shape. Also the weaving is made from memory and it depends on each artisans momentary inspiration. As a result, the designs in some carpets are not even on the entire surface.

Abrash: Due to the different amount of grease in the wool and the added salt during the process of dyeing, the wool has got a varying colour absorbance. This is not very visible before weaving. During the weaving though, lines of the same colour are formed in the carpet. This is called Abrash (which in Farsi means little cloud) and it shows that the wool was not manufactured using chemical means and marks the naturalness and authenticity of the carpets. Examples